When is Suicide Morally Permissible or Morally Required?

For the purposes of this essay the assumption will be that there is no after life or god. Eliminating the concept of god in a sense dissolves the issue of sinfulness and blameworthiness. Therefore a relativist stance will be adopted and the absolutist stance rejected. The issue of cowardice also should be addressed as arguably a soldier going to certain death is not a coward and few people would be able to harm him/herself. The taking of life can be considered under three categories, as an exercise in rational philosophical thought, as an action that has boundaries proscribed by the law, and lastly in a theological sense. It also is worthwhile and imperative to allude to the fact that suicide is only one form of extinguishing life, and that within a social context other forms of taking life are accepted and sometimes necessitated by a particular event. A social stance will be therefore taken to delineate the boundaries and supposed morality or immorality of suicide.. For instance the Augustinian view of suicide is based on the sixth commandment, ? thou shalt not kill?. However one could equally argue that Jesus committed suicide by giving up his life for others despite the fact that Augustine would accept him as the son of God and attribute to him foresight and the ability to have saved himself. The translation of the sixth commandment is ? thou shalt not kill unlawfully? and the whole moral idea is further rendered ambiguous by the fact that suicide is not condemned in the bible, most noticeably the suicide of Judas Iscariot. The Catholic idea of double-effect, that death must have a positive outcome is open to debate, in that can we effectively differentiate between martyrdom, self-sacrifice and suicide, despite intention the agent dies. Jesus himself stated and enacted ? greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another.? However if we adopt an epistemological stance and assume as a premise we are bereft of antecedent evidence of the implications of death, suicide is always an irrational conclusion. As we cannot understand the super-intelligent or conceive of intelligence, due to the parameters of our own minds, that supersedes that of our world-view surely it is impossible to determine any superhuman perspective or prerogative and apply it. The deontological arguments can produce little proof that supports their premise that suicide is inn...

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...om any credibility. Aristotle?s claim that suicide was injurious to the state is also improbable, for the vast amount of suicides received scant recognition except in an insular sense which involved the grief of relatives, but realistically the death of one person by their own hand is immaterial to the state or the machinery it operates by. Morality therefore in the sense of government shows a complicity with popular opinion and seeks to express this through the law and is open to transmutate and revise its definitions as society demands. Suicide is either required or permissible on the basis of the individual agents perspective of what morality is or any other rational argument they propound.

Bibliography:

Battin, Margaret. ?The Least Worst Death?. Oxford, 1994

Grant, Richard B. ?Morality and Rationality of Suicide? from Moral Questions ed. Rachel, James.

Locke, James. ? Two Treatises for Government? chapter 2.

Nagel, Thomas. ? Mortal Questions?, chapter 1.

Rachels, James. ? Active and Passive Euthanasia? from Moral Questions ed. Rachel, James

Warburton, Nigel. ?Philosophy: The Basics?. Second edition, Routledge, 1995